The Elon University community is mourning the loss of a former employee killed Friday in an attack at a restaurant in Afghanistan.

Alexis “Lexie” Kamerman, 27, was determined, fun-loving and dedicated helping others, those who knew her said this weekend. She was among the 21 lives taken when a suicide bomber and gunmen attacked a Kabul, Afghanistan, restaurant Friday.

Kamerman had been in the country less than a year, working as a student development specialist for the American University of Afghanistan, according to a release by the Collegiate Water Polo Association, where she was a former director of membership.

At Elon University, Kamerman served as an assistant director of residence life for the 2012-13 academic year. She left Elon to pursue knowledge and make a difference for Afghan women.

“She saw the world as a place to explore and be a part of,” said Smith Jackson, Elon’s vice president for student life. “I had dinner with her at the end of the (academic) year … She had a real gleam in her eye about this opportunity she’d found out about. It was something she saw she could make a difference in. She said, ‘I’m going for it.’ She was a kind of go-for-it person and that’s what she did.”

The university will host a gathering of friends for remembrance of Kamerman at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the Numen Lumen Pavilion.

The Collegiate Water Polo Association listed her personal, academic and athletic accomplishments in its release and also included an emailed statement from her family.

“She was an amazing young woman — smart, strong, beautiful, funny, stubborn and kind. And fearless. She took the job at the American University of Afghanistan to help the young women of Afghanistan get an education and take their rightful place as leaders in Afghan society. As you could probably guess, her death is a shock to us all and we can’t imagine a moment going forward when she won’t be desperately missed,” Kamerman’s aunt Julie Pfeffer wrote.

Kamerman was a native of Chicago. She graduated from Knox College, in Illinois, in 2008 with a dual bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Sociology. She earned her master’s in higher education from the University of Arizona in 2012.

Jackson notified Elon students and staff of her passing by a campus email.

“She had many friends at Elon and was a very engaging and positive-minded professional who championed the ideals of inclusion and respect,” that email said.